Beat Society Makes Triumphant Return To NYC
February 13, 2011
“What the f*ck are you doing here?” must have been the most repeated phrase of the night, usually followed by an “oh sh*t” and an appreciative pound or hug. On a night when many of the music industry’s elite were hopping red eye’s to California for the 53rd Grammy Awards, New York’s Tammany Hall was like a family reunion for hip-hop’s true school disciples.
The occasion? The first Beat*Society producer showcase in New York in almost six years. The producers exhibition featured Don Cannon, !llmind, Khrysis, Buckwild, Nottz and DJ Revolution on their laptops and Maschines showing off unreleased beats, remixes and sample flips. DJ Evil Dee was on the 1s and 2s warming up the capacity crowd which included Hot 97s DJ Enuff, Peter Rosenberg, Sha Money XL, Oddisee, RSonist, Chace Infinite and Vibe magazines Datwon Thomas.
Hosted by SAO and Stef Tataz (congrats on the little one!) the night also included performances by Danny Brown, Malcolm and Martin, Muhsinah, Skyzoo and Rah Digga.
But to truly appreciate how special the night was you need only this one quote from DJ Enuff, who easily could have walked in the building on name recognition alone: “I paid my $15 to get in! Cuz I support ya’ll!”
Keep checking this post as Nodfactor.com updates with videos from the night.
Remix round of Mos Def’s “History”
Sample flip round…
Beat*Society Is Back In NYC! February 12, 2011[DOWNLOAD]
February 11, 2011
Beat*Society, one of the premier producer showcases around, is back in NYC on February 12, 2011. Nottz, Buckwild, !llmind , Khrysis and Roc Marciano are scheduled to perform and DJ Evil Dee will be on the wheels. If you ever attended any of the shows at the Knitting Factory then you know what is about to go down. Nodfactor.com will be in the building! Details below.
Where: Tammany Hall 152 Orchard St.
When: February 12, 2011. 6pm
Cost: $10, 18 and over [BUY TICKETS HERE]
NO DRESS CODE
ALSO, to celebrate the occasion there is a Beat*Society Mixtape of live performances that you can download HERE
Nottz Talks To Mixtape Daily About The Rawth EP
February 5, 2011
Nottz sat down with MTV’s Mixtape Daily to speak about about his collaborative project with Asher, “The Rawth EP”.
Here’s a little bit of what he had to say.
“Gotta Get Up” (featuring D.A. Wallach of Chester French): “That was for Asher’s new album that’s coming out. It was surprising because he sent me the joint and said he got D.A. on the hook. At the time, I didn’t know who D.A. was. I thought, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’ I did my research and I found out who it was. Then D.A. hit me and asked for a bunch of beats and he would do hooks. So we [were] just waiting on that. D.A. is a good dude. Asher knows a lot of people, I know a lot of people and we just came together and used what we had [to put this project together].”
Rah Digga, “Straight Spittin” 4.5 (Produced By Marco Polo)
January 14, 2011
Just in time for the long weekend one of hip-hop’s certified MILFS Rah Digga is back with the latest in her Straight Spittin’ series, “Straight Spittin’ 4.5.” While Nottz handled production duties on the previous “Straight Spittin IV,” in addition to the rest of Digga’s highly lauded sophomore album Classic, Digga has teamed up with producer Marco Polo for this short but deadly follow-up track.
Atop Marco’s guitar plucks, vocal samples, strings, and pounding drums, Digga picks up right where she left off, delivering a non-stop flow of vocal jabs with lines like, “The spitting’s comprehensive/ Y’all wordplay’s senseless/ I’m spitting every sentence, not knowing where the end is/ I’m spitting, spitting, spitting, ’till there ain’t no more remnants/ They saying, What’s Next? I’m saying, Back to the beginning.”
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Cop CLASSIC at Amazon or iTunes.
iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/classic-bonus-track-version/id388502823
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Rah-Digga/dp/B003XIO7IM
10 Most Slept-On Albums Of 2010
December 30, 2010
There is so much music that comes out per year that it’s almost impossible to keep track. While we’ve been chiming in on some releases over at the day job that most folks at least heard about, I think there are some CDs that tragically went unnoticed in 2010.
I pinched this list from TheUrbandaily because it’s so producer heavy and that influenced my thought process.
Nottz x Asher Roth – Rawth EP | Free DL
December 27, 2010
Dr. Dre’s favorite producer Nottz is cranking out even more craziness for 2010. After putting out You Need This Music (BUY IT!!) he is giving away an EP with Asher Roth for Download. (props to SoulCulture)
Dr. Dre: “My Record Collection Is Gone”
November 23, 2010
As I promised, here are the outtakes from my Vibe cover story with Dr. Dre. In these snippets he talks about meeting DJ Khalil as a kid for the first time, sampling Nottz, programming the beat on “L.A. Nigga
z” and what happened to his collection of 80,000 records.
Nodfactor.com: A few years ago there was an article in The Times Of London where it said that labels were over-compressing music in the mastering because people are listening to music in little earbuds now.
Dr. Dre: That means they’re doing it absolutely the wrong way. You should improve the source of the sound, the thing that people are playing it on. Not the end result. That’s ridiculous.
You mentioned drum kits earlier. How do you feel when you go on line and see “Dr. Dre drum kits”?
I think it’s the biggest compliment. Of course I have my problems when people use my music and they water it down and make it sound corny. But for the most part when I see that it’s a big compliment. If somebody is taking the time out to take a dre kick it makes me feel like what I’m doing is really valuable.
I watched a funny interview with Rockwilder where he talked about sampling your Lolos for Xzibit’s “Front 2 Back.”
Dre: Yeah, yeah. I remember that. What was funny about that is that I loved it so much it made me go “why didn’t I think of that shit?” It was really dope. I was like “damn, that was supposed to me be. That was my shit.” But Rockwilder beat me to that one.
Someone posted one of your Roadium Swap meet mixtapes on Youtube. It had Eazy E rhyming over Dana Dane beat. Do you remember it?
Back then I think I did about 60 different mixtapes. I had a radio show on KDAY. I was on the traffic jam everyday at 5 o clock and a lot of those mixes went on tape for sale. That was a fun period. That eventually developed into me getting curious about engineering.
When did that curiosity become practice?
When I found a facility to practice. There was a radio show called Radio Scope with this guy named Lee Bailey out here. He had an 8-track studio in his garage and he would let me come over and toy with it. I started out learning to engineer and I think that’s why my mixes come out so well because that was my thing. Getting really involved in the technical part of it and then I just started touching the drum machine and so on.
How do you feel about software vs. drum machines?
I have a love/hate relationship with software. I love the quickness of it but the sound is a little transparent. It’s a little difficult to get the sound out of software that I would out of a module or a regular keyboard. That’s the only thing, getting it to sound as warm as it used to.
Snoop’s “Boss’s Life” had the same sample as Buster’s “Everybody Rise” produced by Nottz. You knew Busta had already done it at that point, right?
Yeah! We listened to the Busta record to replay the music! It’s just a track that I loved for a long time and I played it for Snoop and went yeah! We just twisted it up right there.
I guess you’ve elevated yourself to this level to why would Dre use the same sample as someone else?
I understand. It’s something that I liked. That’s one of the tracks I’ve really enjoyed. What’s wrong with that? Do I really need to prove myself anymore? Come on.
You replayed Isaac Hayes “Bumpy’s Lament” for “XXplosive.” Talk about your replay process. What do you say to musicians to get them to sound right?
It doesn’t work all the time. I would say 80 to 90% of the time it doesn’t work. It’s just first finding the right musicians that understand it and they have to be excited about what they’re doing. Some musicians want to sit there and play something they wrote to get money instead of getting the song done. So it’s about the musicians understanding and being able to do what they’re asked to do. There’s no big science behind that too.
“Some L.A Niggas” is one of my favorite Dre Beats because…
The stops and starts…
Yeah! What made you program it that way?
The reason that it was programmed that way was the air in it. I wanted all of the MCs to have that stop. That was the trick, to have the rhyme stop with the beat. I thought if we could get the MCs to stop that way it could be interesting. I know it was no hit record, but it was something we were trying that’s why it comes so late in the record. It was just us having fun. It was funny watching everybody trying to write a rhyme to that stop and it still make sense. They got it off though.
Do you still have a record collection or is it all in a warehouse somewhere?
The record collection is gone now. I had a warehouse full of albums and I contemplated getting rid of it for at least two years before I did it. I wasn’t really using it anymore. It was just sitting there as another bill for storage. 80,000 albums.
Sold or gave away?
Both. What I did was just went through and jotted down everything I was in love with so I could order it [later]
What are three of those records you wrote down?
I didn’t keep em for sampling purposes. Curtis Mayfield’s “Superfly” a Barry White’s Greatest Hits… a gray album and everything else on it was black. [thinks] It might be fucking Nirvana. That’s one of my favorite albums ever made. I still listen to that shit to work out.
On “Next Episode” you took that David McCallum sample and just did something else with it.
Now it’s funny that you say that. The Isaac Hayes song was a slow song and I knew nobody was gonna sample that. I try to go for those obscure samples or something people aren’t gonna think about recreating.
In producer circles there is a lot of talk about the team that you’ve assembled. What is it about those producers like Khalil and Mr. Porter that you like to work with them?
I love their personalities and I love their talent. Khalil is one of the coolest guys you ever want to meet and one of the most talented guys you’d ever want to meet. It’s really crazy because I’ve known Khalil’s sister for at least 20 years now and I was at a pool party that she threw and there was this kid that came up and said he wanted to learn about production. I don’t know how long ago this was but he was 11 or 12 years old. I sat and talked to him for about an hour or two and it was Khalil. Next thing you know he’s out doing his thing and he’s got a song on my album. Which is the craziest shit! And he’s on Eminem’s record sounding real good. He did his thing.
I’m branching out using some other producers on my record and it’s just people that I like. It’s not necessarily a team but it’s just me branching out to other producers that are new and up coming. It does nothing for me to work with somebody who is already established. It means more to me to build something from the ground up.
9th Wonder told me that he wants to ask you how you manage to do so much but not be seen. How do you do that?
I’m really protective of my family, myself and my image. It’s one of the reasons for my longevity in the business. I’m not a person that really gives a fuck about being on camera or people taking pictures of me. I like being to myself. I have my designated events, I do like to party and have fun but in controlled environments, like the room you’re sitting in right now.
RZA has an equally fabled album he’s working on called The Cure and he told me that Detox has to come out before The Cure. “You gotta detox before you get the cure…”
Ha! That’s funny. RZA is my man. He’s dope as fuck too. But there’s really no detoxing. Fuck detoxing. But like I said, hearing it and seeing it is two different things.
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DJ Critical Hype Presents: Nottz Blends (Hosted By Nottz)
November 3, 2010
The homie Critical Hype dropped his latest in the “Art of Blends” series this time enlisting the producer Nottz. Hype tells me there will be a part two coming as well. Check track 22 featuring my dude Bei Maejor courtesy of yours truly.
MediaFire - http://www.mediafire.com/?6m3dbcfcvmkk96o
9th Wonder: “Nottz Is The Best Beatmaker On The Earth Right Now”
August 25, 2010
9th Wonder spoke to Hard Knock TV about Drake wanting his co-sign on Twitter and which producer in the game is his favorite right now.
“I think he’s really had the time to hone his sound. Nottz plays beats that scare you. That’s the person that pushes me to the limit.”
He also talks about having a picture of Dilla holding a copy of The Listening but admits that he never got to meet him.
Nottz F/ The Alchemist, The 1ne [AUDIO]
August 23, 2010
Gotta love it when two produces team up on a track. Here is the latest leak from Nottz upcoming album, You Need This Music, The 1ne F/ Alchemist.
(Props to RapOhneLizenz)
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